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Sparks Fly - Stanford Magazine. "Stanford's design school is hot. Increasingly, a company's success comes from how it engages with customers across many fronts. Design is a huge competitive advantage. But thinking like a designer isn't easy. Here's a look inside Stanford's Imagination Dunk Tank." (Alistair for Hugh).

Building A Burning Man Theme Camp - John Clarke Mills. "I'm headed to Black Rock City next week for the 25th anniversary of Burning Man, a hard-to-describe mix of music, recklessness, and art in the desert North of Reno. I'm going with a camp that makes the experience vastly better than going it alone. This write-up by John Clarke Mills does a good job of explaining the nonsense." (Alistair for Mitch).

NY Times Chrome Extension Ochs - Michael Donohoe. "I've mentioned before the 'end of design,' a concept that I don't quite believe in, but I do believe this: on the open Web it will become harder and harder to control how people see your information. This is especially true as we start to have so many devices (desktops, netbooks, laptops, mobile phone, tablets), each with different display specs. The efficient way to design is to make things flexible so that they will look good on all devices, but as the plug-in Readability and the app Instapaper have shown, web publishers aren't necessarily very good at figuring out how their readers would like to read; or if they are good, they often don't care. Well, Michael Donahue has built a Chrome Extension, that will format the NY Times nicely, to his design specs." (Hugh for Mitch).

Criticism of a brand lowers the self-esteem of its adherents - BoingBoing. "Scott - one of the copywriters at Twist Image - sent me this link earlier in the week. We often look at data, web analytics and social media monitoring to figure out what people think of a brand. The tough part has been sentiment - truly knowing what the person thinks instead of just using technology to decipher words. There are a few technologies that claim to have cracked that Da Vinci Code, but there's another - more fascinating - side that few people have thought about: if you love a brand and people are constantly criticizing it online, what are the ramifications on the individual and their loyalty towards the brand? Does brand bashing affect the self-esteem of those who like the brand?" (Mitch for Alistair).

Deciding on a Book, and How to Read It - The New York Times. "Nick Bilton wrote the book, I Live In The Future And Here's How It Works. He's also the Lead Technology Writer for The New York Times Bits Blog and a reporter for the paper. The title of this piece made me laugh (and the full article was quite fascinating). Let's face facts: the average person does not read enough... pushing that further, the average person doesn't read all that many books (I've seen research that says 1 - 3 books per year). Does technology make it easier to read a book? Yes. But, it also adds in another layer of complexity: 'how should I read it?' On a Kindle? iPad? Nook? iPhone? What? Life used to be pretty simple: you grabbed a book off the bookshelf, found a quiet corner and escaped reality. Now, you have to make sure you have the right device, that it's charged, that the software is installed properly, that all of your credit card info is saved right so that you can buy the book, and that you're in the right place so that you can see the screen instead of the reflection from the sun, etc... Personally, I read books exclusively on my iPhone and iPad through the Kindle app, but even writing that line out sounds complicated." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.